PLANETARY SECURITYAvoiding Armageddon: Narrowing Down List of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids
Researchers identified at least 20 asteroids that scientists may want to study more to make certain they pose no threat to life on Earth in the next millennium. The odds of any of these rocky bodies striking the planet are extremely low, but because the fallout from such an impact would be catastrophic, it’s important to be sure.
Keep an eye on the skies.
Researchers from CU Boulder and NASA have completed a census of hundreds of large asteroids orbiting near Earth—gauging which ones could come precariously close to our planet over the next thousand years. The researchers identified at least 20 asteroids that scientists may want to study more to make certain they pose no threat to life on Earth in the next millennium.
To be clear, the researchers say the odds of any of these rocky bodies striking the planet are extremely low, and are next to zero for the coming century. But because the fallout from such an impact would be catastrophic, it’s important to be sure, said Oscar Fuentes-Muñoz, lead author of the study.
“We don’t want to alarm people, because the results are not alarming,” said Fuentes-Muñoz, a doctoral student in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. “But there are a lot of uncertainties in predicting so far into the future.”
He and his colleagues will publish their findings in an upcoming issue of The Astronomical Journal.
The study takes an unprecedented look at Earth’s place in the solar system, which is surprisingly crowded. Scientists suspect that roughly 962 (plus or minus 50) asteroids a kilometer wide or even larger swing by our planet on a periodic basis. For reference, the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs measured an estimated 6 miles (9.7 kilometers) across.
To find out which ones could get a little too close for comfort, the researchers used a set of innovative mathematical tools to predict the paths 851 large asteroids might take in the next millennium. Most seemed to keep a safe distance from Earth, but a few were less predictable. The orbit of one asteroid called 7482 (1994 PC1), for example, appeared to overlap a lot with Earth’s orbit in the coming centuries. This one, Fuentes-Muñoz said, is worth keeping an eye on.
“The main finding of our study is homework,” he said. “We want to get more information about a number of these asteroids so that we can completely rule out any impact risk in the next thousand years.”
